Filemaker 6 & JDBC/ODBC

[Bohu]

Hi,

We want to develop a JAVA application that pulls some data from our Filemaker databases. We were under the impression that Filemaker 6 now allows direct access to the DB via ODBC and JDBC. However, a first try of the ODBC interface results in about 1 minute per record returned from a simple SELECT statement!!! We also cannot find any info about JDBC. The people at Filemaker themselves don't seem to know anything about this either, some saying it should be possible, others that it would not.

However, the web site (http://www.filemaker.com/products/fmd_features5.html) clearly states: "Use the Filemaker JDBC driver to create Java applications and applets that are front-ends to your FileMaker Pro solutions."

So, does anyone know if this works? Where can we get more info on how to achieve it?

Unfortunately, we cannot use web companion, Lasso or any other technology, because we are also interfacing with other systems that have a JAVA API...and we do not want to use another DB instead of FileMaker because all our Data is already in Filemaker and is used by other interfaces (via FileMaker Client, Lasso, etc.)

Any help???!!!

[Anatoli]

RE: we cannot use web companion

IMHO it goes through WC with JDBC, but maybe I am wrong.

[Bohu]

Anatoli,

We are not at all opposed to running the web companion. In fact we have an extensive web interface based on Lasso to our FM databases, and I think Lasso also goes through the web companion.

What I meant is that this specific application needs to be written in JAVA and we need a more direct way for the application to communicate with Filemaker.

(We still haven't found a single person that knows anything specific about the supposed JDBC support, including 3 people in support and sales at Filemaker...)

Thanks,

Markus

[Anatoli]

IMHO, the JDBC will get the data from FM, because the WC has quite smooth interface to FM.

I was about to start with JDBC, but because FM lousy support for Central European languages I've sold my developer the next day. FM export to HTML table is plain joke in 8-bit languages. Those FM guys still didn't get the fact, that web is 8-bit and not 7-bit anymore.

To be fair, FM itself works reasonably well with CE languages.

It is just the WC, JDBC and all web technologies, which sucks. This also affects the usage of FM databases with CE on machines with different language versions and ODBC.

Surprisingly -- FileMaker sucks in exactly same way on MacOS and Windows.

I've developed workaround so I can work with FileMaker on web, because I still like the core in FM.